THE PROPHETS 
AND THE WAR 



CHARLES C.ALBERJSON 



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THE PROPHETS 
AND THE WAR 



BY 
CHARLES CARROLL ALBERTSON, D.D. 




THE MERIDIAN PRESS 
NEW YORK 



^ 






Copyright, 1917, by 
CHARLES C. ALBERTSON 



OCT -8 1917 

©C!.A473889 



'Thine was the prophefs vision, — thine 
The exultation, the divine 
Insanity of noble minds, 
That never falters nor abates. 
But labors and endures and waits. 
Or, what it cannot find, creates" 

— ^Longfellow 



FOREWORD 

Since August 1, 1914, we have been living 
in one of the most intense and critical periods 
of history. It demands no freedom of poetic 
license to characterize the duration of the 
World War as "a grand and awful time." 
There are those who see, on the battlefields of 
three continents, only a welter of blood, mur- 
der set to martial music, an abyssmal tragedy, 
a riot of destruction. There are others who 
see all this, and more. They lift their eyes, 
and through brief breaks in the storm-cloud 
that hovers over the sky of Christendom, see 
the stars. The Hebrew prophets in their time 
caught such glimpses of light in the heavens. 
They too lived in dark days. Civilization, as 
they knew it, seemed again and again upon the 
brink of hopeless ruin. Yet not one of them 
was hopeless for the future of the best ele- 
ments of his nationality or for the future of 



FOREWORD 

the human race. Because this is so, faithful 
men have saved themselves from fear and 
helped to save their age from wreck of faith by 
shaping their course of thought and action with 
reference to the truths and principles embodied 
in the writings of the religious leaders of Judah 
and Israel. 

It is at once pathetic and encouraging that 
in the present crisis in human affairs there are 
so many serious minds looking for light and 
leading, for help in the interpretation of cur- 
rent history, for signs of an intelligent and 
beneficent Force, able to establish the rule of 
right in spite of the misrule of might. 

The purpose of the following pages is not 
the discussion of critical questions relating to 
the authorship of books or the interpretation of 
texts, but the apprehension of truths which 
may enable us to discern "the inflow of God 
into human events, and the outflow of human 
events back to God, thus completing the cycle." 

Charles Carroll Albertson. 



CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I The Voice in the Wilderness . 


. 1 


II The Vision of God 


. 20 



III Suffering and Redemption ... 43 

IV The Man Among the Myrtles . . 62 



THE PROPHETS 
AND THE WAR 



THE PROPHETS AND 
THE WAR 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 

The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the 
wilderness the way of Jehovah, make level in the 
desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall 
be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be 
made low; and the uneven shall be made level, and 
the rough places a plain: and the glory of the 
Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it to- 
gether. — Isaiah 40: 3-5. 

At the beginning of the study of any proph- 
ecy it were well for us to know the real mean- 
ing of the word "prophet." The Hebrew 
sense of the title does not limit its meaning 
to the ability to predict future events. It is 

true the prophet was a seer, but not neces- 

1 



2 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

sarily a foreseer. As a matter of fact he did 
often foresee and foretell events in the imme- 
diate and even in the remote future. But his 
primary office was to see things as they were, 
to institute a comparison between things as 
they were and things as they ought to have 
been, and to lay upon the consciences of the 
people responsibility for that difference. The 
prophet saw beneath the surface of things, be- 
hind the face of things, the forces which were 
at work, bearing nations down to destruction 
or bearing them up to power. So the prophet 
was a forthteller as well as a foreteller. 

The first office of the prophet was to see, 
and the second was to tell. So the proper 
symbols of the prophet are an eye and a tongue. 
The opening words of the text give us a portrait 
of the prophet; he was "a voice" — sl voice, 
not an echo. Most of us, as Carlyle once ob- 
served, are not voices but echoes. We borrow 
our opinions from other people, or absorb them 
unconsciously. It is one of the primary dis- 
tinctions of the prophet that, humanly, his 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 3 

opinions are original and not derived. Only 
humanly, however, for the prophet's opinions 
are of divine origin. His voice is the voice of 
a man, but his words are the words of God. 
Or rather, his words are human, but the 
thoughts they express are of heavenly birth. 
"Preach the preaching that I bid thee," is 
God's instruction to the prophet. "The voice 
said, What shall I cry ?" See how the prophet 
goes back to an Eternal Source for the con- 
tent of his message. 

To say that the messages of these old 
prophets were derived from God is a strong as- 
sertion. What evidence is there that this is 
so? No direct evidence indeed, aside from 
their own claims, but very conclusive presump- 
tive evidence from other sources. Professor 
Huxley, in an article in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury^ in December, 1885, wrote: "In the eighth 
century B.C., in the heart of a world of idola- 
trous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put 
forth a conception of religion which appears 
to me to be as wonderful an inspiration as the 



4 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

art of Phidias or the science of Aristotle." 
This is strong praise, coming as it does from 
one who rejects the supernatural. Let those 
who neglect the study of the Hebrew prophets 
confront such a testimony, and then justify 
their ignorance of Isaiah if they can. 

Professor Huxley has quite correctly de- 
scribed the times in which these prophets lived, 
their social and religious environment. The 
prophetic voice speaks out of the heart of a 
moral wilderness. Not yet had Jesus come 
to teach men the better way. Not yet had 
democracy developed within the sphere of 
civil government. Not yet was the human 
spirit free of its fetters. It is true, here and 
there were radiant spirits who looked out 
upon the world from lofty altitudes, but 
the masses of men were sunk in animalism. 
The trail of the serpent was fresh in earth's 
Eden. Some of these centuries in the thou- 
sand years which preceded the birth of Christ 
were brighter than others, but all were dark. 
In the darkest of them, priests were corrupt 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 5 

and judges were venal. In the brightest of 
them, the people were all too easily blinded 
by luxury, deceived by false teachers and sat- 
isfied with superficial piety. Their perpetual 
peril was the substitution of ceremonial de- 
votion for vital religion. Into this slough 
practically every generation of the people fell. 
There was not one of the prophets, major or 
minor, who did not warn them against it. 
Every one of them was a voice crying in the 
wilderness ; every one of them was a dedicated 
personality seeking by constant protest to lead 
the people out of the wilderness, to deliver 
them out of the slough, to open up before them 
paths which led to the highways of holiness, 
the highway of their God. 

The terms "major" and "minor," as ap- 
plied to the Hebrew prophets, are unfortunate. 
Originally used with reference only to the 
length or the brevity of their writings, we have, 
without reason, proceeded upon the assump- 
tion that the minor prophets are of minor im- 
portance. Not one of them was a minor per- 



6 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

sonality. Not one of them had a minor mes- 
sage. This is not to say that we may not 
properly prefer some of these prophets to oth- 
ers, on the ground of their greater eloquence 
or their closer approach to the doctrines of 
Christ. Isaiah will continue to be a treasury 
of precious promises pointing to Jesus. Eze- 
kiel will continue to feed minds which are fond 
of apocalyptic visions. But so will Hosea 
continue to be the prophet of domestic sorrow, 
and Micah will remain the prophet of the prin- 
ciples of universal reUgion. Obadiah, with 
but a single chapter to his credit, is as truly 
a voice as is Jeremiah with his fifty-two chap- 
ters. Habakkuk, in the seventh century B.C., 
is as truly a voice as Isaiah in the eighth cen- 
tury or Malachi in the fourth. What have 
centuries to do with these voices? The voice 
of prophecy is eternal. These men wrote im- 
mediately for their times, but ultimately for 
all time. They discussed conditions which are 
not peculiar to any time and enunciated prin- 
ciples which are applicable to all time. Some 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 7 

of the conditions which the Hebrew prophets 
confronted were so similar to conditions in our 
day that it is not too much to say that not a 
few of these prophecies might well be pub- 
lished in the world to-day as "Tracts for the 
Times." From the pulpit of St. Margaret's 
Church in London, within the last twelve 
months, a prophetic voice has claimed the at- 
tention of the Enghsh Church in a series of 
scholarly expositions of Habakkuk as an in- 
terpreter of war. He who reads Isaiah with 
care cannot fail to see how modern a spirit 
Isaiah was and that, in deahng with the prob- 
lems of his time, he anticipated the problems 
of ours. 

The words of the text suggest rather than 
declare, but suggest very plainly, two or three 
great propositions which we in this age are be- 
ginning more or less clearly to apprehend. 
They may thus be stated: The moral unity 
of mankind, the ethical basis of national power 
and greatness, and the civic value of moral 
discipline. 



8 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

In the early stages of development, Israel 
had but a faint conception of anything like the 
organization of a national life. The Jewish 
nation was coextensive with the Jewish race. 
We use terms more correctly when we speak 
of the Jewish nation and the Hebrew race. 
The race existed long before the Jewish State 
was organized. From Moses to David, a pe- 
riod of say five hundred years, the Jewish State 
was embryonic. Under David there rose a 
strong compact State. But, strong as it was, 
the nation, during a period twice as long as the 
history of our Republic, was exceedingly nar- 
row. We find little in the Psalms to indicate 
that any Psalmist dreamed of a community of 
nations, a sisterhood of states. 

It is not strange that this was so. There 
must be nationalism before there can be inter- 
nationalism. But with the rise of the prophets 
the people, who had so long been absorbed in 
their own affairs, began to look out and see 
themselves as a part of the great world. How 
came they to their first dim vision of interna- 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 9 

tionalism? War taught them. Assyria and 
Babylon had risen, miUtary powers of the first 
magnitude, eager for conquest. Nation after 
nation fell before their arms. Statesmen in 
Israel began to think of alliances with other 
nations and leagues of nations. No one sug- 
gested a league of nations to enforce peace, 
but it was in more than one mind to form a 
league of nations with which to curb the power 
of Assyria and Babylon. Above all, it was in 
the prophetic mind to preserve the alliance with 
the God of nations. The Jewish Kingdom 
had been divided after Solomon's death into 
two Kingdoms. Normally, they were ene- 
mies and rivals. In periods of great stress and 
storm they thought more of their similarities 
than of their differences. They cultivated re- 
lations with other states — relations which 
were fraught with moral danger. Israel, of 
old, had a leaning towards Egypt. It was al- 
ways easy for Israel to lapse into Egyptian idol- 
atry. But association with other nations in- 
volved much more than the absorption of inci- 



10 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

dental evils. It involved the absorption of 
new ideas of culture and of commerce. So 
upon the thoughtful mind in Israel there did 
dawn in time gome conception of the moral 
unity of mankind. And upon some minds had 
dawned the still more startling idea, the devel- 
opment of a supernationalism. 

This term "supernationalism" sounds 
very much like supernaturahsm, and if it were 
not an awkward phrase, we might speak of a 
supernatural supernationalism. By it is 
meant the operation of a universal Power in 
regulating the influence of nations upon one 
another. The figure of Cyrus the Persian, a 
man who, seen from this distance, assumes 
the proportions of a Caesar or a Napoleon, ap- 
pears upon the horizon. The voice says, 
"Cry!" and the prophet inquires, "What shall 
I cry?" and God answers, "Cyrus is my shep- 
herd." Nebuchadnezzar is to sack Jerusalem 
and take Israel away into captivity. Cyrus is 
to fall upon Babylon and befriend the cap- 
tives. Is this man God's shepherd? Yes. 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 11 

It is the ministry of calamity. The wrath of 
man, the ambition of man, the cruelty of man, 
are to praise God. Israel is to be purged of 
her iniquity. Her pride is to be brought low. 
The altars of heathen gods upon high places 
which have seen unspeakable abominations 
are to be destroyed. The land the prophet 
loves is to be left desolate. But when Israel 
returns from captivity the altars of spiritual 
religion are to be reerected, and the fires of a 
holier patriotism will consume even the relics 
of national dishonor. 

Cyrus is to prepare the way of the Lord and 
to help make straight in the desert a highway 
for Israel's God. Cyrus is to level the moun- 
tains and raise up the valleys. After him 
comes Alexander, making straight in the des- 
ert a highway for the coming of the Christ. 
Down from the north comes Attila, the scourge 
of God. Huns and Vandals dim the glory of 
classic Rome, but as the glory of pagan Rome 
fades away a new day begins to dawn over the 
ruins of the Coliseum and Nero's palace. 



12 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

Christ's day is coming. A thousand years 
go by and Napoleon appears. Repubhcan 
France is the pioneer of a democratic Europe. 
The mountains of Bourbon monarchy are 
brought low. The valleys of common human- 
ity are exalted. Napoleon makes straight in 
the desert a highway, not for God immedi- 
ately, but for the common people, God's favor- 
ites. This is supernationalism, and the He- 
brew prophets saw it from afar. And we may 
see it now. Or if we may not see it, we may 
feel it. Haig has been leading the British 
armies, Petain the French, Hindenburg the 
Prussian, but God is leading all the armies, 
and things can never be the same in Europe or 
America after this war shall end. Mountains 
are coming down and valleys are coming up. 

The ethical basis of national power and 
greatness. There is not a social problem 
which confronts modern civilization that has 
not a moral basis. Economic problems stand 
out against the moral background. These 
Hebrew prophets are patriots, every one of 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 13 

them. They long for the greatness of the Jew- 
ish State. They have pride in its history and 
hope for its future. But the hope of every 
prophet for the future of his country rests upon 
the abihty and the disposition of the people to 
rid themselves of social wrongs and economic 
injustice. Indeed, they appeal to the shrewd 
worldliness of the Jewish mind all the more 
powerfully when they show how questions of 
morals may be looked at from the economic 
point of view. The voice in the wilderness 
cries, "Why do ye spend your money for that 
which is not bread, and your labor for that 
which satisfieth not?" Such a voice might 
have cried out, prior to August, 1914, on the 
streets of London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, 
"Why do ye spend your money for that which is 
not bread, and your labor for that which satis- 
fieth not?" 

Such a voice is needed in New York. What 
would Isaiah say on Fifth Avenue, or at New- 
port, or Bar Harbor? What would he see? 
Exactly what he saw in Jerusalem in the eighth 



14 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

century before Christ. Exactly what Jesus 
saw eight hundred years later. Exactly what 
George W. Cable saw in New Orleans, in 1860 : 
"Men getting money, and women squandering 
it. Gold pouring in at the hopper and out at 
the spout. Thousands for vanity, thousands 
for hidden sins; a slender fraction for the 
wants of the body; less for the cravings of the 
soul. Lazarus paid to stay away from the gate. 
John the Baptist in broadcloth, a circlet of 
white linen about his neck, his meat, strawber- 
ries and ice-cream. The lower classes scorned. 
Awkward silences and visible wincings at allu- 
sions to death. Converse on eternal things 
banished as if it were the smell of cabbage." 

This was Rome during the reign of the 
Caesars. It was every European capital before 
the Present War. And we called it civiliza- 
tion. But, as a great international lawyer said 
at a meeting of the American Bar Association 
not many years ago, "Civilization is not do- 
minion, wealth, material luxury, nay, not even 
a great literature and education widespread, 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 15 

good though these be. Civilization is not a 
veneer; it must penetrate to the very heart 
and core of societies of men. Its true signs 
are, thought for the poor and suffering, chiv- 
alrous regard and respect for woman, the frank 
recognition of human brotherhood, irrespective 
of race or color or nation or religion, love of 
ordered freedom, abhorrence of what is mean 
and cruel and vile, ceaseless devotion to the 
claims of justice." 

Every Hebrew prophet saw clearly, and we 
moderns, whether Hebrews or Christians, must 
see that religion and patriotism alike demand 
that we be no longer indifferent to social sin 
and misery. "Prepare ye the way of the 
Lord." This means that we must develop a 
new conscience, a commercial conscience, a 
corporate conscience, a civic conscience, and a 
new heart for poor humanity, remembering 
that "poor humanity" is not merely humanity 
strugghng with poverty, humanity poorly clad, 
but that it describes all humanity which lacks 
anything of mental horizon and moral strength. 



16 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

If the Hebrew prophets have any message for 
the world in the year of our Lord 1917, it may 
be thus summed up: "The fate of civiliza- 
tion is to be ultimately decided upon moral 
grounds," Belgium, raped and robbed, has 
promise of better permanence than Prussia — 
though that may not be saying much! Right- 
eousness, like truth, though crushed to earth 
shall rise again. 

"Prepare ye the way of the Lord" is a call 
to national service by the path of moral dis- 
cipline. The world's deserts are mostly in 
men's minds. The high mountains which 
must be brought low in order to make a high- 
way for God and for God's purpose are moun- 
tains of ignorance and mountains of prejudice 
and mountains of selfishness. The valleys 
which must be exalted are the valleys of low 
thoughts, of sordid impulses; valleys of sloth 
and slippered ease; valleys in which we live 
who are perfectly content with enough to eat 
and enough to drink and enough to wear. 
"Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 17 

years." So Europe was saying to itself when 
the tempest of war broke. And where is Eu- 
rope's surplusage of goods to-day? So we 
were saying to ourselves a little while ago. 
Now comes the storm. Excess profits are to 
go into the common treasury. Large incomes 
are to be heavily taxed. Even small incomes 
must be divided for the common good. What 
we would not do for education or charity or 
missions, we have got to do for war. 

In the light of the burdens which have been 
laid upon us, nay, in the light of the burdens 
we have willingly, almost gladly, assumed, we 
read anew the word of God, "Ye are not your 
own." It is a fact, we are not our own. 
Nothing we have is our own. The State has 
a perfect right to take all we have, if it be neces- 
sary to save the State. Our sons are not our 
own. Our lives are not our own. America 
has never before known the meaning of self- 
surrender as fully as we know it now, or shall 
know it soon. And is all this loss? Nay, 
come what may of necessity for sacrifice, we 



18 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

shall find ourselves richer than ever before in 
all that goes to make up abundant life. Fam- 
ily life may be enriched by the enforced absence 
of a dear one. What we have left, when 
every tax is paid and every voluntary burden 
borne, will weigh more than all our fortunes 
devoted to selfish ends. Britain and France, 
Italy and Russia were never so rich as now, and 
we shall be none the poorer for sharing our 
wealth with them. "The glory of the Lord 
shall be revealed," says the prophet. And 
what is the glory of the Lord? The glory of 
the sun is to shine. The glory of the earth is 
to yield her increase. The glory of the Lord 
is the glory of the Supreme Giver. And the 
glory of the nation, like the glory of the Church 
of God, is to exhaust itself in giving. 

I had a field, and lent it 

To one who had no land to cultivate. 

He turned the soil and found a treasure there; 

Never before had I such yield. 

I had a house unoccupied; 
I lent it to a homeless man, 



THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 19 

And lo! the value of the house I occupied 
Increased in double measure. 

I had a jewel, bright and rare; 

I sold it that the price thereof 

Might feed the famine of a multitude; — 

My starving soul was kept alive 

By human fellowship with those my gift had fed. 

I had a life to live ; I sought 

To live it to the full — ^to reach the heights; 

I threw my life away — 

I cast it in the balance of a noble cause; 

That day I first began to live. 



II 

THE VISION OF GOD 

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord 
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his 
train filled the temple. Above him stood the sera- 
phim: each one had six wings; with twain he cov- 
ered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, 
and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto an- 
other, and said. Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of 
hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And 
the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice 
of him that cried, and the house was filled with 
smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am un- 
done; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for 
mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts. 

Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having 
a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with 
the tongs from off the altar: and he touched my 
mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy 
lips; and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin 
forgiven. And I heard the voice of the Lord, say- 
ing, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? 

20 



THE VISION OF GOD 21 

Then I said, Here am I; send me. And he said, 
Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but un- 
derstand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.— 
Isaiah 6: 1-9. 

While it is true that the terms "major" and 
"minor" as applied to the Hebrew prophets do 
not justify us in regarding the minor prophets 
as of minor importance, nevertheless one at 
least of the major prophets must ever be ranked 
first in the goodly fellowship of the prophets. 
All the Hebrew prophets are as stars in the 
firmament of religious history, but "one star 
differeth from another star in glory." There 
is a branch of astronomy, known as celestial 
photometry, which deals with light-ratios of 
stars. The faintest stars visible to the unaided 
eye under favoring atmospheric conditions are 
of the sixth magnitude. It requires one hun- 
dred such stars to give as much light as a star 
of the first magnitude. Sirius, the Dog-Star, 
"the glory of our winter skies," is the brightest 
star in our heavens. What Sirius is in the 
sky, Isaiah is in the firmament of prophecy. 



22 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

Of noble if not of royal birth, of lofty imagina- 
tion, gifted with clear insight into politics as 
well as with exalted ideas of morality and spir- 
ituality, richly endowed with the genius of 
poesy, a master of the arts of verbal symbolism, 
devoted alike to the culture of unselfish patriot- 
ism and pure rehgion, his name shines with a 
luster that the ages cannot pale. 

Isaiah is not first of Hebrew prophets in 
point of time. He is not first indeed in that 
great group of prophets who arose after the 
division of the Solomonic kingdom. Hosea 
and Amos preceded him. These two ap- 
peared in the northern kingdom of Israel, ex- 
posing present evil conditions and preparing 
the people for impending perils. They were 
of the few who saw clearly the tendencies of 
their times. Within ten years the king of 
Israel became a vassal of the Assyrian king, 
A little later the northern part of Israel was in- 
corporated as an Assyrian province and it was 
not long until the political kingdom of Israel 
had ceased to be. 



THE VISION OF GOD 23 

About 779 B.C. Uzziah ascended the throne 
of Judah and reigned for nearly forty years. 
His was a prosperous and successful reign. 
New trade routes were laid out connecting with 
Egypt and the Persian Gulf on the south and 
east and with Phoenicia and Damascus on the 
north. Reforms of administration were insti- 
tuted and the natural resources of the land 
were developed. But, as wealth accumulated, 
manhood decayed. The numerous wars of 
preceding generations had resulted in the loss 
of so many of the bravest and most ardent 
spirits of the nation — and this is one of the 
curses of war, a biological fact with far-reach- 
ing moral consequences — that the character of 
the people could not resist the temptations 
which naturally accompany prosperity. Un- 
scrupulous men acquired immense holdings of 
land; wage-earners were oppressed; society 
ran greedily after illicit pleasures, and the fu- 
ture of rehgion seemed dark indeed. A storm 
was gathering in the sky which only two men 
in all Judah clearly perceived; one of these 



24 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

men was Isaiah, and the other was Micah. At 
the very time when the nation needed a strong 
hand at the helm, Uzziah was stricken with 
leprosy, and king though he was, became an 
alien in his own palace until death brought him 
merciful release. 

"In the year that king Uzziah died" — the 
year of multiplying perils and gathering tem- 
pests, the year in which, if all the facts had 
been known, weak men would have fainted 
with terror and even the strong would have 
trembled at the thought of doom; in the year 
of all years calling for wide vision of thought 
and well directed vigor of action — in the year 
that king Uzziah died, a young man dreamed 
a dream and saw a vision. This was the be- 
ginning of Isaiah's prophetic ministry. This 
was the call, and the ordination was soon to 
follow. 

All that this vision meant to Isaiah we may 
not know. Whether it came by day or night, 
waking or sleeping, we cannot tell. But, 
since a cause must be adequate to the effects 



THE VISION OF GOD 25 

it produces, and since the result of this vision 
molded the whole future course of this high- 
born youth, there can be no doubt that it was a 
vision splendid, vivid, graphic, realistic, deeply 
and indelibly impressive. As he describes it 
we recognize the Oriental metaphors, the rich 
parable of throne and temple and winged ser- 
aphim, which imagination fails to reproduce 
for us of the Western world with our Western 
modes of thought. We do not understand it, 
just as we do not understand Pentecost with 
its rushing mighty wind and its lambent 
tongues of fire. But, as we perfectly under- 
stand that Pentecost marks the entrance of a 
new and mighty spiritual Force into the world, 
so in this vision of Isaiah we recognize an 
event in the life of a man in the light of which 
life can never be the same, in the light of which 
henceforth he sees forces at work in the State 
and in the Church, forces active in the world 
at large, to which he has been blind before. 
Jacob had such a vision at Peniel, and Peter at 
Joppa. Augustine had such a vision amid 



26 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

the paling splendors of a declining world em- 
pire, and Bunyan had such a vision in the midst 
of the corruption and intolerance of the most 
profligate age that England ever saw. 

Jacob's vision was of an opening heaven; 
Peter's vision was of an inclusive spiritual king- 
dom ; Augustine's vision was of the New Jeru- 
salem; John Bunyan's vision was of the Chris- 
tian's pathway Home; Isaiah's vision was, first 
of all, of God. The supreme hour of any life, 
the rarest pearl of hours, is when God is first 
thought of as real, when He is seen, in the 
mind of the dreamer, the thinker, as He is. It 
may be we have thought of God as an imper- 
sonal Power, an impenetrable Mystery, a 
Stream of Tendency, an Infinite Unknown or 
an Infinite Unknowable. It may be we have 
imagined Him as a great King, sitting on His 
throne of power, hurling thunderbolts at His 
enemies. It may be we have pictured God a 
stern Judge with instruments of vengeance in 
His hands, ready to strike through with prongs 
of pain the luckless sinner who stands before 



THE VISION OF GOD 27 

Him. But when one who has held such a view 
of God sees Him as He is — the God who is bet- 
ter than our best thoughts of Him can be, more 
patient than any teacher, more pitiful than any 
father, more comforting than any mother, more 
sovereign than any monarch, yet still not per- 
mitting His sovereignty to impair His father- 
hood — that is the day of our inward illumina- 
tion, that is the birthday of our hope; and if 
we be not too selfish, it is the begininng of our 
real ministry. 

I have somewhere in the world to-day a 
friend, a wanderer on the face of the earth, a 
homeless man "without chick or child." He 
is a dreamer of great dreams, and you have 
read some of his dreams in poetry. His 
dreams have been of beauty and of truth, but 
generally of truth impersonal, and unsatisfac- 
tory because impersonal. Not a great while 
ago he had a new vision, and it was like Isaiah's 
in this respect — he got a new view of God. I 
have in his handwriting the first expressed rap- 
ture of his soul after he saw God. Because of 



28 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

what he saw in God, poverty, pain, homeless- 
ness, deferred hope, ill requited labor have all 
been less a burden to him than they were once. 
Thus he writes, and not Isaiah speaks more 
certainly than he: 

I know Thee, God! 

Thy vastness I see; 
The stars and the sod, 

All life, tell of Thee. 

I know Thee, God! 

My Father, my Friend; 
Thou liftest the rod 

A gift to extend. 

I know Thee, God! 

Almighty, All-kind; 
In gloom though I trod. 

My way was defined. 

I know Thee, God, 

And know all is well. 
Though fate may be shod 

In sandals of hell! 

I know Thee, God! 
And Thou knowest me; 



THE VISION OF GOD 29 

I move at Thy nod 
For what is to be. 

For good and not ill 

The long road I plod, 
To work Thy great will — 

/ know Thee, God! 

My poet's vision was of God in Hir relation 
to a personal life. Isaiah's vision was of God 
with reference to a country of the long ago, a 
kingdom whose days were numbered, but a na- 
tionality which still persists. The Hebrew na- 
tion has ceased to be, but the Hebrew nation- 
ality, like the Gulf Stream in the ocean, flows 
on unmixed with other currents and unde- 
flected from its course. 

The effect of Isaiah's vision most concerns 
us. We too need to see God. And we are 
coming to see God. Our eyes have been 
opened in recent days. Not yet perhaps is the 
vision splendid; not yet is it restful; not yet is 
it reassuring. Perhaps it cannot be restful 
and reassuring until it is first to us what it was 
to Isaiah, piercing, discomfiting. Surgery 



30 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

must sometimes precede healing. Bones must 
sometimes be broken before they can rejoice. 
"Faithful are the wounds of a friend." 

The first effect of Isaiah's vision of God is a 
very painful consciousness of self. A Psalm- 
ist said, "In Thy light shall we see light/' and 
he might have said, "In Thy light shall we dis- 
cern darkness." We all know how, often. 
Scripture is a mirror of the soul in which we 
see our own disfigurements. The sight of God 
caused this noble-minded and high-living 
youth to see his own corruption and the cor- 
ruption of his age. Do we of this age see our- 
selves as God sees us? It is to be feared not 
many of us have that vision. Here and there 
prophets have it, and they have been preaching 
to us for a generation the necessity for self- 
examination. City after city in America in re- 
cent days has spent large sums in social and 
sanitary surveys. Not a few of our great mu- 
nicipalities have instituted commissions on 
morals. The leaders of us, the real moral 
leaders, have been trying to induce us to look 



THE VISION OF GOD 31 

at ourselves. Only since the war has there 
been any general disposition to take an inven- 
tory of our human resources. The vast ma- 
jority of us have yet to see in what we are 
really rich and in what we are truly poor. 

Nations are rich or poor according to the 
wealth or poverty of their ideals. Where are 
our social ideals ? Who are the people we pay 
most to see or hear? Whom do we put into 
palaces and whom do we consign to hovels? 
A moving picture hero gets — it is said he 
earns — $700,000 a year. A gifted singer is 
enabled out of his receipts to indulge his taste 
for costly gems and rare curios of the Orient. 
A popular comedian takes back with him from 
America, as profits and royalties of a single 
season of "entertaining," a sum not less than 
the salary of the President of the Repubhc for 
a quadrennium. Organizers and executives 
of industrial enterprises can have what sal- 
aries they please, while two of our great re- 
ligious denominations are making painful ef- 
forts to raise the average salary of their minis- 



32 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

ters, in one case to a thousand dollars a year, 
and in the other to twelve hundred. The 
average wage of the public school teacher — it 
is not sufficient to justify the title "salary" — is 
considerably less than a thousand dollars a 
year. In short, we pay vastly more to be en- 
tertained than we do to be educated or to be 
inspired or to be improved in mind or morals. 
There is a new branch of science known as 
Eugenics. Comic papers poke fun at it and at 
people who talk about it. But the plain facts 
are that we have bureaus of animal husbandry; 
we have endowed departments of research into 
improved methods of breeding poultry, swine 
and cattle; we spend vast sums on the improve- 
ment of draft horses and race horses ; we have 
invested in the manufacture of motor vehicles 
in twenty years more money than we have in- 
vested in colleges in a century. And what do 
such facts signify? Only this, but plainly 
this, that our ideals — and there is little dif- 
ference between an ideal and an idol — are in 
need of revision. We are better builders of 



THE VISION OF GOD 33 

machines, weavers of cloth, diggers of canals, 
creators of commerce, than we are builders of 
manhood, protectors of childhood, redressers of 
wrongs. 

Isaiah bemoaned the fact that he dwelt 
among a people of unclean Ups and that he 
himself was a man of unclean lips. The sight 
of God, the right thought of God, the concep- 
tion of God as Infinite and Perfect Righteous- 
ness, led him to profound dissatisfaction with 
his age. But no amount of dissatisfaction 
with our age is of any practical worth in the 
way of reform if the unit of dissatisfaction be 
not dissatisfaction with one's self, and if the 
willingness to reform begin not close at home. 
Some time ago a brilliant young student of 
irregular habits sought an interview with a 
prominent pastor, a leader of great movements, 
and laid before him in glowing terms his 
scheme for social reform. The pastor heard 
him patiently and then with rare tenderness 
said, 'Tour plan is a good one, and it would 
be a great boon to humanity if it might be car- 



34 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

ried out, but do you not think it would be wise 
for the reform to begin in your own life ? You 
know there must be a unit of reform to begin 
with," The young man had sense enough 
and grace enough to see the point. 

Isaiah saw the uncleanness of his own lips 
before he saw the uncleanness of the lips of 
the people. His first exclamation, after the 
sight of Infinite Righteousness, is "Woe is me! 
for I am undone; because I am a man of un- 
clean lips." There is great hope for any re- 
form which begins in the heart of the pros- 
pective reformer. This was the early fault of 
Moses. He began his crusade by murdering a 
cruel taskmaster. His act of rashness de- 
feated for a time the very will of God. In the 
lonely years which followed the murder of the 
Egyptian Moses had time to cleanse his own 
stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff which ob- 
structed the thought of God as it sought to find 
a channel in the swift current of Moses' life. 
Isaiah was wiser than Moses in that respect, 
and we must be; surely the race has learned 



THE VISION OF GOD 35 

something in the centuries which have passed 
since God called Israel out of Egypt. His- 
tory's lessons must not be lost on us. 

A thoughtful student of current history 
pointed out to us two years ago that while our 
national weakness has sometimes been in de- 
lay, quite as often it has been in an inconsid- 
erate demand for what may be called "in- 
stancy." It is this impulse, he reminds us, 
which makes America the greatest purchaser 
of cure-alls in the world, which makes Amer- 
ica peculiarly prone to demand political pan- 
aceas. We believe in social salvation by a 
word, a battle-cry, rather than by a process. 
We are blind to ways and means. Neither 
free silver nor free trade; neither Government 
ownership nor socialism can save the State. 
The people must be lifted one by one. We are 
inclined to make even religion a matter of 
forms and symbols, relying upon things rather 
than upon thoughts. If the thought of God 
as Righteousness brought intense conviction of 
sin to the mind of the prophet, the thought of 



36 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

God as Infinite Patience must have corrected 
in him his youthful impulse to precipitancy. 
How shall we reconcile such apparently con- 
tradictory admonitions as "The King's busi- 
ness requireth haste" and "He that believeth 
shall not make haste"? By preserving our 
mental poise, by carrying out the sentiment of 
the poet, "without haste and without rest." 

These many days the air has been full of in- 
sistent demand for preparedness, but what 
have the people meant by "preparedness"? 
Some have meant one thing and some have 
meant another. But the modern prophet, the 
successor of Isaiah and Micah, has seen that 
there must be a proper balance between mili- 
tary preparedness and moral preparedness. 
Dr. John Finley speaks of the mobilization of 
the moral forces of the nation, the mobilization 
of the interior forces of our manhood. Ten- 
nyson sings of one "whose strength was as the 
strength of ten because his heart was pure." 
Pure hearts, pure motives, lives stripped of 
selfish aims and ends, a people with desires 



THE VISION OF GOD 37 

purged of unworthy passions, a national soul 
"dowered with the hate of hate," — such a 
power is invincible and unconquerable. Such 
a force thrown into the world struggle will lift 
the balance into which it is cast, however wav- 
ering that balance may be now, will lift it to un- 
challenged victory. But victory, after all, is of 
the spirit. The great victories of history have 
been moral rather than material. This is as 
true of the Marne as of Marathon and Bunker 
Hill. Liege, Louvain and Namur may be rep- 
resented in sculpture by that figure called 
"Gloria Victis," a winged woman's figure bear- 
ing aloft a youth who has received a mortal 
wound in combat. The youth faints, droops, 
but still clings to his broken sword. This is 
the very essence of conquest, "the spirit of 
the unconquerable." 

To Isaiah and to his compatriots, contem- 
porary and succeeding, the vision of God 
brought not alone soul-searching and soul- 
cleansing but immeasurable motive. "And I 
heard the voice of the Lord saying. Whom shall 



38 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, 
Here am I ; send me." This is the justification 
of the vision. The Mount of Transfiguration 
has little value unless we carry with us from 
the heights, when we descend into the plain 
of the commonplace, the glory we have beheld. 
The prophets employ a very significant phrase 
to describe the habit of church-going. They 
call it "temple-treading." To what end is the 
vision of the temple-treader if he leave behind 
him as he passes out through the Beautiful 
Gate into the unbeautiful city the image of the 
heavenly city whose splendor smote him as he 
laid his gift upon the altar ?, 

Let us read again these first four chapters 
of Isaiah. We may have to read them many 
times before we see what one of our great mod- 
ern expositors points out, that the prophet had 
a vision of three Jerusalems — the ideal Jeru- 
salem; Jerusalem as it was, cobwebbed with 
reUgious neglect and littered with social wreck- 
age, and Jerusalem as it was to be, less perfect 
than the ideal Jerusalem, but more perfect than 



THE VISION OF GOD 39 

the Jerusalem of his day. The prophetic soul 
can see three Americas — the ideal America, 
America as she is, and America as she is to be, 
cleansed by the fire of sacrifice and strength- 
ened with the might of chivalrous manhood. 
The prophet of God sees the modern city, first 
as God would have it built ; then as the modern 
city is; then the city of to-morrow, the city of 
our children and our children's children, not 
yet the New Jerusalem, but something vastly 
better than the city that we know. Tennyson 
had a prophetic vision when he wrote, sixty 
years after his first "Locksley Hall": 

Is it well that while we range with Science, glory- 
ing the time, 

City children soak and blacken soul and sense in 
city slime? 

There among the gloomy alleys, Progress halts on 
palsied feet, 

Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thou- 
sands on the street; 

There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of 
her daily bread; 

There a single sordid attic holds the living and the 
dead; 



40 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

There the smoldering fire of fever creeps across the 

rotten floor 
And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of 

the poor. 

Dr. David Gregg twenty years ago wrote a 
book called Makers of the American Re- 
public^ in which he gives vivid pen-pictures 
of the Virginia colonists, the Pilgrims, the 
Dutch, the Puritans, the Quakers, the Scotch 
and the Huguenots. The book embodies the 
result of extensive historical research, but is 
still more valuable because so highly suggest- 
ive of American history yet to be written. We 
are the makers of the Republic of to-morrow. 
Right rapidly are we making history in these 
days. "We have seen a fiery gospel writ in 
burnished rows of steel." We have seen every 
nation in Europe drinking the vintage of the 
grapes of wrath. We have dared to take the 
cup into our hands, though not yet have we 
raised it to our lips. We are yet to taste its 
bitterness and perhaps to drain its dregs. But 
we shall learn, by so much as we seek to square 



THE VISION OF GOD 41 

our purposes to the mind of God; by so much 
as we cast down our golden idols and cease to 
worship in our high places of pleasure, by so 
much as we lift the conflict out of the arena of 
self-interest and achieve the secret of spiritual 
alliances, by so much as we rise above merce- 
nary living and settle down to simple earnest- 
ness and even to severity of life, that a nation 
may prove its soul even while it treads the path 
to its Gethsemane. It is not necessary that we 
should be conveniently environed, or that we 
should be rich and increased with goods, or 
that we should command the commerce of the 
world, or play a great part in world politics; 
but it is necessary that we should scorn the 
tricks of petty politics ; it is necessary that the 
statesmen of the South should be ashamed to 
say to the people of the North, "You have 
clamored most loudly for preparedness, you 
must pay the greater part of the war taxes"; 
and it is necessary that we should keep our 
minds as free from fear as from foolish optim- 
ism. Only so shall our swords be bathed in 



42 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

heaven. The nation that shrinks from plain 
duty loses its soul — if it have left a soul to lose. 
The nation that resorts to injustice is forging 
the weapons of its own destruction. The na- 
tion that forgets God is doomed to rot and die. 
This was Isaiah's message to Judah and Jeru- 
salem and, we believe, it is the prophetic mes- 
sage to America to-day. "He that hath ears 
to hear, let him hear." 



Ill 

SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 

Who hath believed our message? and to whom 
hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed? For he 
grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root 
out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeli- 
ness ; and when we see him, there is no beauty that 
we should desire him. He was despised, and re- 
jected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted 
with grief: and as one from whom men hide their 
face he was despised; and we esteemed him not. 

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our 
sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of 
God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our 
trangressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; 
the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and 
with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep 
have gone astray; we have turned every one to his 
own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity 
of us all. 

He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he 

opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the 

slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is 

dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression 

43 



44 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

and judgment he was taken away; and as for his 
generation, who among them considered that he was 
cut off out of the land of the living for the trans- 
gression of my people to whom the stroke was due? 
And they made his grave with the wicked, and with 
a rich man in his death; although he had done no 
violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. 

Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath 
put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an 
offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall pro- 
long his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall 
prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of 
his soul, and shall be satisfied: by the knowledge 
of himself shall my righteous servant justify many; 
and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will 
I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall 
divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured 
out his soul unto death, and was numbered with 
the transgressors : yet he bare the sin of many, and 
made intercession for the transgressors. — Isaiah 
53. 

In its liberal sense, redemption is the recov- 
ery of what has been lost. Differ as we may 
concerning the doctrines of original sin and 
the fall of man, it requires only a superficial 
knowledge of humanity to convince us that, in 
a very real sense, we are members of a lost race. 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 45 

A thing is lost in so far as it fails or is unable to 
fulfill the purpose of its maker. A locomotive 
that leaves its track is lost — until it is restored 
to normal condition. A sick body is lost un- 
less medical or surgical science shall cooperate 
with nature in restoring it to its natural func- 
tioning. What shall it profit a man to gain 
the whole world — to gain all worlds — if his 
own soul be lost? What is a lost soul? A 
soul off the track, a soul helplessly sick, an in- 
valid soul, a soul which is lost in respect of its 
proper use. In all these senses — and in 
more — the world is lost, and hence is in need 
of redemption. A locomotive, its trucks 
buried in the soft earth, calls for the wrecking 
crew. A stricken body calls for the physician. 
A lost world calls for redemption. 

There were three men in Rome at about the 
same time, Nero, Seneca and Paul. Nero was 
a hedonist, Seneca a soldier and Paul a Chris- 
tian. Nero saw the world as the subject of 
pleasure. Seneca saw the world as the subject 
of reflection. Paul saw the world as the sub- 



46 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

ject of redemption. But Paul was not the first 
to have this view of the world and humanity. 
The Hebrew prophets had been given the same 
vision. This it is which redeems their writ- 
ings from absolute despair. Theirs is 

the patriot's dream 
That sees beyond the years 
The alabaster cities gleam, 
Undimmed by human tears. 

But no one of them saw redemption immedi- 
ately. They saw it as we see the golden-tipped 
spires of airy temples in the sunset clouds, or 
as we see the palms and fountains in a desert 
mirage. (There is justification of the use of 
such a figure in speaking of prophecy, in the 
very word Isaiah uses in that wonderful thirty- 
fifth chapter, in which he says "the glowing 
sand shall become a pool." His word for 
"glowing sand" is Kterally "mirage." So the 
mirage, a thing utterly unreal, is to become 
real, the vision is to be fulfilled.) 

The redemption of the human race, in the 
prophetic view, is to come mediately rather 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 47 

than immediately, that is to say, by the use of 
means, as the culmination of a process. All 
the prophets see the culmination of the process 
more or less clearly, but to three of them it is 
given to see the process itself, Isaiah, Jere- 
miah, and Hosea see, in differing degrees, the 
place of suffering in redemption. Isaiah sees, 
first, a suffering nation as the agent of God's 
redeeming purpose. Later he sees a suffer- 
ing remnant of a nation, keeping alive through 
their faith in God the hope of the world for 
ages yet to come, singing the songs of Zion in 
a strange land, cherishing under alien skies 
the hope of "the consolation of Israel." At 
last Isaiah sees a Man, a single suffering Serv- 
ant, through Whom human redemption is to 
be complete. While "the thoughts of men 
are widened with the process of the suns" — 
thoughts with reference to the redemption of 
the race — Isaiah's thoughts with reference to 
the media of redemption grow narrower and 
narrower with the process of the suns until in 
the fifty-third chapter he gives us a portrait of 



48 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

a lone Sufferer wounded for our transgressions, 
bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of 
our peace upon Him, our heahng purchased 
with His stripes. Whomsoever Isaiah may 
have had in mind, and whatever the process he 
foresaw by which one bruised Life should be- 
come an offering for collective sin, we think 
we know whom He had in mind, Who spoke 
through Isaiah's lips. 

Waiving all questions of criticism touching 
the interpretation of prophecy in general and 
of this prophecy in particular, practically all 
scholars agree that Isaiah's picture of a soli- 
tary Sufferer purchasing redemption for many 
has its only perfect historic counterpart in 
Jesus Christ. We do not use terms loosely 
when we say this is His portrait. It is true. 
He was not the only man in history to be de- 
spised and rejected. There have been innu- 
merable men and women of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief; myriads have been 
oppressed and afflicted; not a few have made 
intercession for transgressors, but of One and 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 49 

One alone can it be truly said that He bare the 
sin of many and that "Jehovah hath laid on 
Him the iniquity of us all." 

It takes nothing from our sense of the 
unique value of the sufferings of Jesus to say 
that the Atonement He made was in accord 
with a law of atonement which runs through- 
out life. Jesus is, as an apostle calls him, 
''first among His brethren." And who are 
His brethren? All who have suffered for the 
redemption of their fellow-men, all the goodly 
fellowship of the prophets, all the glorious 
company of the apostles, all the noble army of 
martyrs. 

Dr. Charles Allen Dinsmore has given us a 
noble book entitled Atonement in Literature 
and Life, in which he affirms that sin, suffer- 
ing and reconciliation are among the control- 
ling ideas of both religion and literature, and 
that no religion can gain the assent of reason- 
ing men which does not contain a positive 
message regarding these. He reminds us that 
sin, retribution and reconciliation are the 



50 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

theme of the Iliad. Three of the seven plays 
of -Sschylus which have come down to us re- 
veal the essential seriousness of the Greek 
mind, capable as it was of intense conviction 
of sin and of the necessity of redemption by 
suffering. The hereditary curse of sin is 
stayed only when a right-minded man, Orestes, 
was put to grief. The soul of Orestes became, 
in a sense, an offering for sin, for the sin of 
his ancestors and the sin of his generation. 

The idea of redemptive suffering runs all 
through the noblest literature of the ages. It 
is in the CEdipus of Sophocles, it is in Dante, 
it is in Shakespeare's Tempest and in his 
Henry VIII. Milton is full of it, and Tenny- 
son, "largest voice since Milton." So is 
Browning. It is of the very essence of moral 
grandeur as set forth in the words of Sidney 
Lanier in The Marshes of Glynn: 

"Ye spread and span like the catholic man who 

hath mightily won 
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain, 
And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a 

stain." 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 51 

It is significant that two of the most striking 
literary productions of our day should bear the 
same title, one in English and the other in 
Latin. Frederic Lawrence Knowles was 
scarcely more than a brilliant boy when he died 
in 1905, but he left behind him immortal 
lines and none more perfect than these he 
calls Out of the Depths: 

Torn upon Thy wheel, 

Foul'd with blood and dust, 
Still my heart can feel, 

Still trust; 

Still my lips can urge, 

"Heal me with Thy Sword, 
Cleanse me with Thy scourge. 

Lord, Lord!" 

Though a bleeding clod, 

Faint with thirst and pain, 
Still my hopes, dear God, 

Remain; 

Yea, and more than hope: 
Faith! A prayer! Awing! 

Even on Calvary's slope 
I sing!" 



52 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

An English man of letters, essayist, play- 
wright and poet, fell into deep disgrace and 
was sentenced to a term in prison. His De 
Profundis was written in a convict's cell: 

"I have lain in prison for nearly two years. 
Out of my nature has come wild despair; an aban- 
donment to grief that was piteous even to look at; 
terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; 
anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no 
voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed 
through every possible mood of suffering. Better 
than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth 
meant when he said: 

Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark, 
And has the nature of infinity. 

But while there were times when I rejoiced in the 
idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could 
not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find 
hidden somewhere away in my nature something 
that tells me that nothing in the whole world is 
meaningless, and suffering least of all. That 
something hidden away in my nature, like a treas- 
ure in a field, is Humility." 

There has already been a considerable lit- 
erary fruitage of the present war. Poets like 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 53 

John Masefield and Rupert Brooke have sung 
their songs; eloquent advocates have issued 
their appeals for the defense; narrative writers 
have found sufficient themes for the exercise 
of their rarest gifts. But the epic of the war 
is yet to be written. Perhaps its greatest 
song is yet to be sung. When that epic is 
written, when that song is sung, shall it not be 
a De Profundis? Can it be anything less? 
A book by Mr. Owen Wister bears the title, 
The Pentecost of Calamity. The latest 
book by Dr. George Sherwood Eddy is called 
Suffering and the War. It was in the 
twelfth century of our era that Bernard of 
Cluny wrote the hymn beginning "The world 
is very evil." If some Bernard of our day 
were to write a hymn for this age, it might well 
begin, "The world is very sad." The fair 
fields of Belgium are desolate. Prosperous 
provinces of France have been stripped bare 
of human habitation and of every forest and 
orchard. Not in those provinces can it be 
said, "The birds of the air have nests." 



54 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

Stately temples are in ruins. Historic palaces 
are shapeless heaps of debris. University li- 
braries are in ashes. Serbia has been swept 
as by a fire. Portions of Poland have been 
thrice fought over. There are sections in that 
unhappy country where it is said there are left 
no children under seven years of age. More 
than a million people are now starving in 
Armenia, Syria, the Caucasus, Persia and Pal- 
estine. The past winter has been the most 
terrible winter the world has ever known. A 
million and a half Armenians have been 
massacred. The American consul at Tiflis 
reports forty thousand fatherless children in 
his region. In Damascus, where Saul of Tar- 
sus received his sight, 120,000 people have 
died during the last two years of the war. 
A missionary writes, "I saw thirteen dead 
in one Uttle alley." 200,000 have died in 
Lebanon alone. One of the Syrian pastors 
in Lebanon fasted twenty days in order to give 
some food to the hundreds of hungry people 
about him, and at length he too perished. An 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 55 

American missionary in Syria writes, "What 
I have seen and heard passes all imagination. 
It was like passing through hell. One place 
where my carriage stopped women were search- 
ing in the refuse of the road for barley seeds. 
I gave them some bread. They threw them- 
selves on it like dogs dying of hunger." But 
hunger is not the worst form of suffering nor 
is death the most dreadful fate. 

The banishment of the Armenian popula- 
tion of the Turkish Empire from their homes, 
accompanied as it has been by unspeakable 
atrocities, marks the massacre of a race. But 
not all martyrs are massacred. How many 
women and girls have been driven from their 
homes as the German army has fallen back to 
the "Hindenburg line"? At best they must 
serve the oppressors of their people. At 
worst, death were vastly to be preferred. 
Think of the Belgian exiles in Germany. 
Think of five millions of men in prison camps. 
Think of seven millions of men lying in shal- 
low graves in France, in Galicia, in the Balkans, 



56 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

at Gallipoli, in South Africa, in Mesopotamia. 
Think of the thousands who have found their 
sepulcher in the sea. Think of a milhon men 
bhnded or lamed for hfe. This is a part 
of the ghastly harvest of war. Science has per- 
fected the instruments of destruction we wield 
so expertly, but science has no cure for broken 
hearts. And unnumbered hearts are broken. 
There is a far-away look in unnumbered wom- 
en's eyes. What do they see? They see what 
Forceythe Willson saw who saw war stripped 
of its romance: 

I see the death-gripe on the plain, 
The grappling monsters on the main, 
The tens of thousands that are slain. 
And all the speechless suffering and woe of heart 
and brain. 

I see the gorged prison den, 
The dead-line and the pent-up pen. 
The thousands quartered in the fen, 
The living deaths of skin and bone that were the 
goodly forms of men. 

And still the bloody dew must fall, 
And His great darkness with the pall 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 57 

Of His dread judgments over all, 
Till the dead nation rise transformed by Truth to 
conquer all! 

And to what end is all this? Ah, that is 
the question we are all asking. Is all this 
loss to bring the world no gain? Are we 
spending our treasures or are we squandering 
them? Is this "Pentecost of Calamity" to 
bring no gifts? Is it to bring no rushing 
mighty wind to chase away evil vapors? Is 
the fire of this Pentecost to have no purifying 
power? Are not the tongues of this Pentecost 
to speak at length ? If not, then it is no Pente- 
cost, but Babel. Yet even Babel yielded more 
than mere confusion. Men learned to build 
by having their foolish towers topple over upon 
them. God did not begin this war, and He 
is not continuing it. But He is in it. He 
was before it. He will be after it. He saw us 
building our high walls and higher towers. 
He heard the hymns of hate they sang before 
the German Hymn of Hate was written. He 
was a witness of the toasts that were drunk 



58 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

"To the Day" — the day of hell let loose and 
murder set to martial music. His still small 
voice spoke to those who would listen, but the 
multitudes were deaf to it. For forty years 
international jealousy, suspicion and distrust 
had been gathering the fagots for this con- 
flagration. The hand of a Serbian student 
set the torch to the pile, but if his hand had 
not, another's would. They make the fire 
who assemble the fuel. 

This is God's world, and the people in it are 
God's children — unless they repudiate His 
parenthood. He is the soldier's God, and the 
prisoner's God, and the sufferer's God. In- 
deed He is the suffering God. Victor Hugo 
once wrote on the base of a crucifix: 

Weepers, come to this God, for He doth weep; 
Ye sufferers, come to Him, for He doth care; 
Ye tremblers, come, for He doth mercy keep; 
Come, ye who die, for He doth still endure. 

The Captain of our salvation was made per- 
fect through sufferings. In all the afflictions 
of Israel, Israel's God was afflicted. In Israel's 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 59 

exile, Israel's God was exiled. God was with 
the saving, suffering remnant that returned 
from Babylon. And all the while God was 
preparing the world for the supreme revelation 
of Himself in One whose visage was to be "so 
marred more than any man," and whose soul 
was to be an offering for sin. 

God is revealing Himself to men and women 
through the experiences of the war. We are 
learning what we would not permit peace to 
teach us — that nations, like individuals, can 
not live unto themselves ; that nations must be 
unselfish. We are learning the value of inter- 
national comradeship in the defense of a com- 
mon ideal. We are learning a new respect for 
the rights of small nations. The sufferings 
of Belgium since August, 1914, have written 
her name imperishably in history. For a few 
fateful days she held the German Army at bay 
until France got her breath and until Brit- 
ain brought her "contemptible little army" 
across the Channel. Belgium is bruised, but, 
thank God, she bruised the serpent's head! 



60 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

We are learning a new passion of revolt against 
the possible domination of the world by one 
ambitious Power. We are learning the beauty 
of sacrifice. They who face death daily are 
learning the possibility of a constructive belief 
in the life to come. They — and we all — are 
learning to think with a new sincerity. 
Ghastly as war is, the virtues of unselfishness 
and devotion to high ends shine aloft like 
stars. Women were never so noble. The 
words "1 serve" express the passion of un- 
counted hearts. We are learning how lightly 
we hold our chattels — subject to the common 
weal. And sufferers are learning everywhere 
the tender comfort of the God of love. Jesus 
Christ is walking through the world to-day. 
Dying eyes catch a sight of His passing glory 
and dying hands reach out to touch the hem 
of His garment. The world sees God through 
its tears and gropes in its anguish if haply it 
may find Him, though He is not very far from 
any one of us. 

Sad as the world is, it is alive with a new 



SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION 61 

hope of a better world when this war shall end. 
The fire is burning up much that we wanted to 
get rid of. The storm of hail is sweeping away 
many a refuge of lies. A new epoch lies just 
beyond the horizon — an epoch of free peoples 
and of peace no king or chancellor can ever 
again molest or break. Those who suffer in 
this war are helping to purchase with their 
pain the safety of "our children and our chil- 
dren's children and as many as are afar off." 



IV 

THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 

Upon the four and twentieth day of the eleventh 
month, which is the month Shebat, in the second 
year of Darius, came the word of Jehovah unto 
Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, 
the prophet, saying, I saw in the night, and, behold, 
a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among 
the myrtle-trees that were in the bottom ; and behind 
him there were horses, red, sorrel, and white. Then 
said I, my Lord, what are these? And the 
angel that talked with me said unto me, I will show 
thee what these are. And the man that stood 
among the myrtle-trees answered and said, These 
are they whom Jehovah hath sent to walk to and 
fro through the earth. And they answered the 
angel of Jehovah that stood among the myrtle-trees, 
and said, We have walked to and fro through the 
earth, and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is 
at rest. 

Then the angel of Jehovah answered and said, 
Jehovah of hosts, how long wilt thou not have 
mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, 

62 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 63 

against which thou hast had indignation these three- 
score and ten years? And Jehovah answered the 
angel that talked with me with good words, even 
comfortable words. So the angel that talked with 
me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith 
Jehovah of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and 
for Zion with a great jealousy. And I am very 
sore displeased with the nations that are at ease; 
for I was but a little displeased, and they helped 
forward the affliction. Therefore thus saith Je- 
hovah: I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies; 
my house shall be built in it, saith Jehovah of 
hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth over Jeru- 
salem. Cry yet again, saying. Thus saith Jehovah 
of hosts: My cities shall yet overflow with prosper- 
ity; and Jehovah shall yet comfort Zion, and shall 
yet choose Jerusalem. — ^Zechariah 1: 7-17, 

In the sixth century before Christ the exiled 
Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylon un- 
der the inspiration of Zerubbabel and Joshua. 
Deserted altars were restored, neglected sacri- 
fices were resumed, and the rebuilding of the 
ruined Temple began. Two prophets arose 
during this period, Haggai and Zechariah. 
The first messages of Zechariah blended with 
the last messages of Haggai. Haggai spoke 



64 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

to the older generation, Zechariah to the 
younger. The prophetic message is harmo- 
nious, though the messengers strike different 
notes. Haggai looks back and sees the house 
of God in its former glory. His vision of the 
future is colored by memory. Zechariah is 
forward-looking; hope paints his picture of 
the future. Yet he is not indifferent to the 
value of the past. He is the ideal reformer, 
learning from nature, which evolves new forms, 
not by rejecting the old, but by incorporating 
them and going forward. 

The prophets who predicted the Exile have 
been vindicated. Seventy years have passed 
since the First Great Exile, and sixty since the 
Second, which completed the downfall of the 
Jewish State. The saving remnant of God's 
faithful people have kept alive in their hearts 
the hidden seeds of a true spiritual kingdom. 
Meantime a generation has grown up in Baby- 
lon quite well satisfied to remain expatriates. 
But there are those who cannot forget Jerusa- 
lem, who prefer it above their chief joy. Divine 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 65 

discontent is in their souls, however fat may 
be the harvest-yield in Babylon. At last the 
way opens for the repatriation of the people. 
The exiles return. If psalmists were needed 
in Babylon to cheer the flagging spirits of the 
exiles, prophets are still more needed now to 
act as reconstructionists, to steady the waver- 
ing wills of those who, like their ancestors 
centuries before, preferred bondage with its 
fleshpots to the joys and sweets of freedom. It 
has always been the deepest curse of slavery so 
to sap the vigor of a people as to make them 
content with slavery. 

Zechariah reminds his generation of the 
judgments of God upon an age that "did not 
hear nor hearken unto Jehovah." He asks, 
"Your fathers, where are they? and the proph- 
ets, do they live forever?" He affirms that 
the words and statutes of the Almighty do live 
forever. He cries: "Thus saith Jehovah of 
hosts. Return unto me, and I will return unto 
you." Then there dawns upon him the vision 
of the Man under the Myrtles. It is a night- 



66 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

time vision, but it is prophetic of the dawn. 
The place of the vision is a valley, but the fig- 
ures in the vision are like those Elisha had seen 
on the mountainside long before. First among 
them is the Angel of Jehovah, and back of him 
is a troop of horsemen mounted on horses, red, 
bay and white. The prophet inquires, "What 
are these?" And the Angel that talked with 
him said, "I will show thee what these are." 
Then the man who stood among the myrtle- 
trees said, "These are they whom Jehovah hath 
sent to walk to and fro through the earth." 
They are God's cavalrymen, God's scouts, and 
they report, "We have walked to and fro 
through the earth, and behold, all the earth 
is at peace." This is strange, though the 
prophet does not comment upon it. He awaits 
the explanation. History tells us that at this 
very time — or about this time — wars were rag- 
ing; that if wars had ceased, they had ceased 
only for a brief interval. The year was 519 
B.C. Persia was seething with revolt. Gen- 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 67 

erally speaking, it was always so while Chaldea, 
Babylon, Persia and Egypt flourished and flung 
their banners in the air. "Red ruin and the 
breaking up of laws" ruled with only brief and 
precarious intervals of quiet. 

True, all was quiet in Judah and Jerusalem, 
but it was the quiet of lassitude, apathy and 
death. There is another possible interpreta- 
tion of the angel's words. It is said by hydro- 
graphers that far beneath the surface of the 
sea quiet reigns. Turbulent as the waves may 
be that rise and fall before the tempestuous 
winds, the undercurrents are still. God sees 
life's undercurrents. It is quite possible that 
the spiritual life of a nation may rest even in 
the midst of war. Certainly saintly soldiers 
have found it true that at times there may be 
"central peace subsisting at the heart of end- 
less agitation." Read the letters of General 
"Chinese" Gordon. All around him was 
tumult, tumult of Chinese rebels, tumult of 
bloodthirsty blacks, but all within was passive 



68 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

and tranquil. There was one who could say. 

In the secret of His presence, I am kept from strife 

of tongues, 
His pavilion is around me, and within are ceaseless 

songs. 

That one who sees with clear spiritual 
vision may perceive the prevalence of inner 
quiet even while "the heathen rage and the 
people imagine a vain thing," has excellent il- 
lustration in the life of our own people. On 
Good Friday, April 6, of the present year, 
after two and a half years of heart-searching 
and waiting, two and a half years of abasement 
and admirable self-restraint, two and a half 
years of vain effort to preserve mental neutral- 
ity, the United States entered the World War. 
Superficially, America has been at peace since 
the European War began, but actually there 
have been wrestlings of spirit as keen and an- 
guished as those of Jacob by the brook. A 
prayer of thanks went up from unnumbered 
hearts when President Wilson appeared be- 
fore Congress and declared that we must have 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 69 

an active part in making the world safe for 
democracy. We experienced a sensation of 
unspeakable relief. That this feeling was 
shared by the multitudes was evident on every 
hand. The thought must occur to us that, 
whatever the reports of God's outriders un- 
der the myrtle-tree may have signified as to 
the then condition of the world with reference 
to war and peace, there are times when God 
sees peace beneath the most volcanic of po- 
litical eruptions. This quality of vision, to 
see things under the aspect of eternity, to 
perceive the trend of things, their ultimate, is 
the secret of the prophetic gift. We endure 
what were otherwise unendurable "as seemg 
the invisible." ^^ 

"All the earth sitteth still, and is at rest. 
Scarcely a generation passed before one of the 
decisive battles of the world was fought. The 
nations were at this very moment preparing for 
Marathon. Yet Marathon ultimately meant 
peace, because it was a victory of the spirit, a 
great step forward in the march of human prog- 



70 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

ress. It was right that the Music Hall at 
Athens should be built out of the timbers of 
the captured ships of Marathon. There is no 
music on earth or in heaven sweeter than that 
which celebrates the victory of the human spirit 
over the forces that would crush it. The mod- 
ern Prussian world is akin to that ancient Per- 
sian world. It may not be clear to all that 
this is so. Neither was it clear to all that the 
Greeks at Marathon stood for freedom, but we 
see it now. We see now vastly better than 
they saw on the battlefield of Tours that 
Charles the Hammer was God's man, and that 
the hammer was beating out the shape of a free 
Europe. A thousand years from now it will be 
more apparent than it can possibly be to us 
that the armies of the Allies are fighting for 
the redemption of the future. But we are not 
altogether blind to the moral meaning of the 
world-storm that rages about us. Thoughtful 
and far-seeing men in the trenches are fight- 
ing with the consciousness of a service per- 
formed for generations yet to come. There 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 71 

are occasionally searching words in letters from 
the Front. There are pages in Donald Han- 
key's book, A Student in Arms^ that attest 
the possession of a strange peace, a peace that 
passes explanation. Nothing is more amazing 
than the patience of the wounded and the hope 
and calm content of dying men, French and 
British, as described by physicians and nurses 
in military hospitals. It is something more 
than the heroism that lies sleeping in the hearts 
of common men. It is evidence that men may 
be reconciled to the severest aspects of suffer- 
ing if they are confident that the disaster is not 
meaningless. 

We may not have interpreted aright the 
words of the angel. Perhaps for a little time 
there was peace on earth — ^while men were 
sharpening their knives for their neighbors' 
throats. There was peace in the world when 
Jesus was born, but peace soon to be broken. 
Yet the angels sang "Peace on earth," and the 
angels saw the history of humanity as a whole. 
Peace on earth? Yea, "among men of good- 



72 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

will." Good-will is the one permanent basis 
of peace, and good-will is of the moral essence 
of Christianity. We talk of leagues to enforce 
peace, and such leagues must be so long as 
beasts in human form plan and plot to disturb 
the peace of the world. Madmen must be re- 
strained for their own good and for the com- 
mon good. Marauders must be arrested. If 
bad men conspire, good men must associate to 
defeat their conspiracies. But far away in the 
future lies the fulfillment of the apocalypse of 
peace, not peace imposed but peace evolved, 
peace growing out of permanent good-will. 

Where had these riders been ? Through all 
the earth. No nation had been unvisited. 
No battlefield had been unwatched by the 
celestial eyes. These are the agents of an 
immanent God. They are the fleet, sure- 
footed, open-eyed messengers of the Eternal. 
Swifter than eagle's flight their course. Their 
silent camps are spread by every rolling river 
and under every arching sky. God is not in- 
different to what happens on earth. He may 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 73 

seem to be, and the fool may say there is no 
God because judgment tarrieth. Let this vi- 
sion correct the error of good men who fear 
and of bad men who hope that God is inactive. 
History proves that, as John Bright said, in the 
long run ''the Eternal Powers are with the 
equities." God is the ruler of the world and 
He is no absentee landlord. He is the God of 
all the nations, and He has no favorites. 

In the report of an address by a German 
theological professor in the Berliner Local 
Anzeiger for November 13, 1914, we read, 
"But the deepest and most thought-inspiring 
result of the war is 'the German God' ; not the 
national God, such as the lower nations wor- 
ship, but 'our God,' who is not ashamed of be- 
longing to us, the peculiar acquirement of our 
heart." A pastor in Liegnitz, in a book of 
war sermons, says, "One thing, I think, is clear. 
God must stand on our side." Again he 
speaks of "the old intimate kinship between 
the essence of Christianity and of German- 
ism." In the same sermon he affirms that "the 



74 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

Germans are the very nearest to the Lord.'' 
Evidently he worships at the shrine of a tribal 
God. Jehovah is to him only a magnified 
Kaiser. Germany has much to learn from the 
Hebrew prophets and not a little from this 
vision of Zechariah. And so have we who 
falter in our faith and ask if God has forgotten 
Belgium and Serbia and Poland and Armenia. 
No, God has not forgotten. His eyes see every 
desolate home, every exiled patriot, every un- 
marked grave, every blood-stained footprint 
on mountainside or desert. "Vengeance is 
mine, I will repay, saith Jehovah of hosts." 

It is not the thoughtless or the immature 
mind alone that asks, "What if God does see, 
so long as He does not help?" Ah, but he 
does help. He both sees and succors. He 
has given a million Armenians the courage to 
decline to renounce their faith. It is not in 
human nature for a delicate girl to embrace 
death rather than accept Islam. If human life 
be the chief thing, if human safety be the sum 
of human good, there were no martyrs such as 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 75 

these. Far more precious than hfe is char- 
acter, and through the darkness that has 
settled down on Bible lands, heroic faith and 
unsulUed honor, hope that makes naught of 
death and courage that defies torture, shine out 
Uke stars in the midnight sky. It was as plain 
to Zechariah twenty-five hundred years ago as 
it was to James Russell Lowell in the crisis 
which preceded our Civil War, that 

Behind the dim unknown 

Standeth God within the shadow keeping watch 
above His own. 

The prophet heard God speak to the angel 
under the myrtles "with good words, even com- 
fortable words." God was still jealous for 
Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy 
and he was sore displeased with the nations that 
were at ease. Therefore God had returned to 
Jerusalem with mercies and with promises of 
abundant blessings. Observe the personal 
pronoun in these words: "My cities shall yet 
overflow with prosperity." The cities of Ju- 
dah were God's cities. Jerusalem was still 



76 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

God's city, though it had been in ruins. 
Every city is God's city if it be inhabited by 
God's people, if it be builded in righteousness 
and founded upon equity. This was the 
proclamation of the prophet's vision, as it had 
been the message of his predecessors before the 
Exile. This is the dream of the prophet of 
our day, to make this city and every city a city 
of God. 

There was a time when Florence proclaimed 
Christ King. But cities are not made religious 
by proclamations. If cities were built of brick 
and stone and mortar, they might be dedicated 
to religious uses by proclamation. Cities are 
not thus built. A city is a social organism. 
A state is a great family. A nation is a vast 
household. A city, state or nation belongs to 
God only by so much as its people belong to 
Him, and they belong to Him only in so far 
as they surrender themselves to do His will. 
And God's will is not accomplished by pen- 
ances or pilgrimages. The Hebrew prophet 
made plain the will of God for his age and for 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 77 

ours, as to city building and nation building: 

Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! 
. . . Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his 
house, that he may set his nest on high! . • . Thou 
hast devised shame to thy house by cutting off many 
peoples, and hast sinned against thy soul. . . . 
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and 
establisheth a city by iniquity! 

The supreme height of prophecy was 
reached by one who lifted up his voice from the 
low hills of Judah : 

He hath showed thee, man, what is good ; and 
what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
God? 

Justice — ^justice to backward races; justice 
to subject nations; justice to alien peoples; 
justice to feeble governments. Mercy — ^mercy 
to conquered cities; mercy to neutral neigh- 
bors; mercy to non-combatants on land and 
sea ; mercy to prisoners of war. Humility be- 
fore God; not the proud look and the scornful 
judgment of all "outlanders" as uncultured, 



78 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

but the painful heart-searching that seeks to 
square our purposes to the mind of the All- 
Righteous — this is the Christian temper in 
peace and war. God grant that America and 
her allies may strive to reach and keep it in 
these times that try men's souls! 

We did not enter the war lightly. We 
weighed with scrupulous care the worth and 
appraised the value of the ideals that are ar- 
rayed against each other on the battlefields of 
Europe. Neutrality of action was no longer 
possible, as mental neutrality had been an 
empty phrase since the raid on Belgium and 
the sinking of the Lusitania and the Sussex. 
With malice toward none — even toward the 
malicious; with charity for all — even for the 
uncharitable; with firmness in the right as 
God gives us to see the right, we go forth to a 
war which, let us fondly hope, shall end war, 
and with it, end the dream of world-empire 
founded on force. 

We are in this war, all of us, and all of us 
must do our part: soldiers and sailors; ambu- 



THE MAN AMONG THE MYRTLES 79 

lance-drivers and aviators; doctors and nurses; 
fathers and mothers whose sons are swift to 
see their chance to serve the age; investors in 
Liberty Bonds and contributors to Rehef 
Funds; editors, pastors and teachers who help 
to keep alive in pur hearts the sacred fires of 
rational patriotism; merchants and manufac- 
turers who demand no war-time profits on 
their trade ; tillers of the soil who rise early and 
labor long in order to increase the harvests of 
the land; women who find time in the midst 
of their absorbing tasks to knit and sew and 
wind bandages for the Red Cross; payers of 
special taxes who gladly bear their share of 
the financial burden of the war; girls and boys 
whose eyes glow as they pledge allegiance to 
the Flag whose symbolic meaning they are 
learning daily — all have a part in this war. 
The veterans of other wars have a part in it. 
The stars that shone on Shiloh and Gettysburg 
shine as brightly over France and Belgium. 
The seas that bathe the shores of Europe are 
the same that bore the fleets of Farragut and 



80 THE PROPHETS AND THE WAR 

Dewey. The hands that gave the world the 
airship and the submarine have not lost their 
cunning, and ultimately the best fighters are 
those who have the most to fight for! 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the 

sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you 

and me; 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make 

men free, 

While God is marching on! 



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